All That's Left
by Jessi Noan
Summary: Johner has needs. Needs that are not being met at all. Set after Alien: Resurrection with the surviving characters; involved in no other movie.


**Title**: All That's Left

**Fandom**: Alien: Resurrection

**Pairings**: one-sided lust-hate Johner/Clone-Ripley; vague allusions to a possible future Johner/Vriess; implied Clone-Ripley/Call

**Warnings**: Adult language; Adult situations; Crass at points; this is completely movie-verse. Don't look for anything to correlate with or be supportable by the comics or any other supplemental materials.

**Genre**: General; Bleak, but hopefully a little Humorous

**Rating**: R or M

**Feedback**: Appreciated.

**Notes**: I was practically dared to do this. When someone foolishly tells me to write screwed up stories in the _Alien_ universe, however jokingly, I do everything in my power to make said person regret such a statement. If that means tarnishing Ron Perlman forever and ever, so be it. I think I failed at that, but it was an honest attempt to prove nothing is sacred.

--

Johner was very close to giving up. Not on life, fuck no; he'd made it this far, despite all odds - he was going to ride this one out. He might regret that decision later, when one of those freaky, killing machines ripped his face off through the back of his head, but for now, he was content to slam the rest of his drink and wave another his way. It was the simple things that made the prospect of a horrific, mutilated death worthwhile – or, at least, dimmer with every glass emptied.

No, what Johner was close to giving up on was every getting laid again. After six months of forced celibacy, after four previously of being too freaked out to get a decent night of sleep, let alone chase some tail, Johner figured the course of his life would fall into one of a perpetually drunk monk, like those guys in the kung fu movies, except with more bullets and less useless, flying kicks. A raving, perpetually drunk monk – he kind of liked that. It was sort of poetic, he figured, in the way that only an uneducated mercenary would.

The more he considered it, though, the less he thought his inevitable occupation was monk and more 'crazy homeless person decrying the end of the world' fit the bill. A thankless job, but that was hardly a status he was unaccustomed to, and the way he was going, he could slip right into it, no problem.

And really, he felt like a crazy man. He knew he wasn't, but any time he tried to talk to normal people – people who hadn't seen those buggy, murderous creatures with the too many jaws and alloy casing and fuck, where were their eyes? He still couldn't figure out where their fucking eyes were, not that he ever stuck around long enough to examine them or anything – further proof that he _wasn't_ crazy – he couldn't come down from his experience enough to connect with them. Connecting with other people, particularly women, was something a man of his facial failings found necessary in order to have sex with something not made out of plastic. He drew the line at plastic.

For the next month, _at least_.

_Probably_.

At any rate, that left Johner with the sad fact that the only people he could talk to made up the beginning of a bad joke.

"A cripple, a clone and an android walk into a bar…" he muttered morbidly into his glass.

"Ouch." The clone smirked lightly, the only humor evident clearly at his expense, and took the stool beside him while signaling the bartender to get her one of the same. Morosely, Johner watched the clone from the corner of his eye, always simultaneously unnerved and turned on by her presence, and noticed the blue neons of the bar made her skin shine like the monsters did in the red evacuation lights of the ship.

Behind his immediate appraisal of 'fucking hot' was the more frightening one of 'acid blood' and Johner took a long pull from the cheap, watered-down battery acid he was favoring, while the thought simmered in the back of his mind. Life just wasn't fucking fair.

"Ripley," he rumbled out in greeting, head swaying in a slight nod. Where his crewmates – all dead, except the aforementioned cripple (that android was _not_ his crewmate) – had tact and sarcasm, Johner had the blunt force of his thoughts and he never bothered to wrap them up with the vague intentions of politeness. "Why are you here?" he demanded, forever to the point.

"Just wanted to see the place Call tells me you spend all our money at," Ripley replied easily, taking a sip of her drink without wincing, something Johner had only been able to do after three determined gulps. He shrugged it off as his not having any illicit moonshine around since the massacre and ignored the nagging fact that Ripley didn't drink.

He snorted. "What money? If I had money, I'd be spending it on whores, not this shit." The bartender pretended not to hear him. They'd worked out an exchange rate earlier in their customer-supplier relationship, which more often than not involved Johner maiming or killing someone for the watery, foul-tasting booze he always had to get used to. He explained this to Ripley, in the far more succinct, "We have an agreement."

The way Ripley's eyebrows shot up and the malicious, compressed smile that slashed into her face reminded him how much he actually hated this woman. "An agreement, huh?" she threw back, leaning heavily on 'agreement' and laughing, always laughing, except when she was killing, though she was probably laughing then too, invincible fucking bitch, must be nice to never be afraid, and this time, it was at him without ever letting a hiccup of mirth out of her mouth. The fact that she never came right out and actually _laughed_ made it worse, somehow.

"Yeah, an _agreement_," he threw back, tone as surly as her amusement was cruel. "Doesn't fucking matter. I'm not spending the money. Talk to that fucking doll, trying to save the fucking world on everything we bring in – probably giving it all to some charitable anti-government group. Whining all day 'bout how much people suck. Course people suck. We're not built from sour milk and wires. We don't have to _not_ suck."

Ripley's face had taken on a blank, slightly narrowed look, which tended to warn of shrewd violence being inflicted on someone in the vicinity. For what it was worth, Johner knew he was jumping head first into dangerous territory – well, _more_ dangerous territory, as anything around Ripley immediately qualified as dangerous, shit she was nuts – since Call was practically the clone's pet, all combed and petted and indulged, but he had enough alcohol in his system to not care. Frustration over never having sex again and an almost year long annoyance at his life having been saved by that tinker-toy fused into the foolish venting of a very drunk man.

At least he had enough sense left to know when retreat was in his best interest. Johner abruptly finished his drink off with a swill, staggered off his stool and waved his exit at the bartender all to the sound of warning bells ringing loudly in his ears. Ripley followed shortly after, not bothering to acknowledge the bartender or her drink. Johner knew the second she sat down that her drink was on him and figured the bartender was of a similar opinion.

It could be said that they weren't in a nice place of town – they couldn't afford financially or publicly to be in nice places – but the truth was there were no genuinely nice places left on Earth. Nobody wanted to live there and if they did, they were the nut job loyalists that were defective anyway and would be useless and wasteful in the space colonies. What was left for the planet-bound were grimy, dark alleys in rundown, ignored cities, hovels with wilting walls to take shelter in, spotty electricity, the barest of necessities being met and lots of barren wasteland to make up the landscape. Artificial sanctuaries did exist, but there was no way they'd ever be in one. As it was, they were stuck on this planet until they could find an illegal ship willing to take them off.

Johner never liked Earth and every day he spent on the surface was one more aggravation to add to his already tense situation. He considered it a dump, ever since he was old enough to know what a shit-hole his planet was, and originally hooked up with Elgyn's crew just for an excuse to stay the fuck off it. The thing he hated most was rain, particularly city rain that fell heavy and dirty and with a slight burn, like the sky specialized in acidic sludge and gave it freely, all the time. If that wasn't an indication that Earth sucked, Johner wasn't hard pressed to find another one. He'd written a list once, with Christie when they had nothing better to do between spaceports, but it'd been lost long before they got the assignment to snatch those cryotubes.

Johner stepped out of the bar, waiting for Ripley to join him not out of courtesy or companionship, but because he hated having her behind him (_acid blood, metal nails_), and let the slow drizzle of stinging water burn sobriety back into him. The bar not being more than three blocks from the two bedroom they'd managed to hole up in – he couldn't be bothered to go much further than that when everywhere served the same shit – meant their walk would be blessedly short.

"Nice weather we're having," Johner grumbled into the air, not expecting an answer and not disappointed in his expectations. Ripley may have hummed in response, but it was probably the lights overhead giving a last crackle before burning out.

_Acid blood, acid blood._ Johner worked himself into confusion over that. Were her fluids all acid, then? Was her saliva acid? Was- he really couldn't let himself go there. If he did, he'd be forced to ask and Ripley wouldn't give him a straight answer – she'd probably just smirk and ask him if he wanted to find out and he'd be stupid enough to say yes and he liked his tongue and fingers and dick – 'cause in his mind, Johner would ride her hard and put her back wet, reality be damned - not horribly disfigured by acid from a clone's cunt - he wasn't that desperate yet. The android could deal with that mess. She wasn't even real – couldn't really feel pain and could just sew or weld or whatever pieces back on – so who gave a shit if any of her parts dissolved?

All his thoughts of Ripley were tempered by the very real fact that she could kill him at any moment, he wouldn't be able to do a damn thing to stop it and the only thing that kept him alive was a general disinterest on her part. Being a mercenary most of his life meant this situation sat very poorly with him. He was not used to being held at the whim of someone else – that was his job, dammit - which made his relations with Ripley all the more strained. Johner didn't attempt conversation again and was visibly relieved when they entered the dungeon they called home and Ripley immediately left him to find the android.

Johner remained in the living room, where Vriess set up shop to tinker with his chair and the attachments and anything else he could get his hands on – how the hell did he survive and not the captain? –, and sagged into the couch, the three hours of hard drinking ruined from the joint efforts of acid rain and acid blood.

"Not looking too good there," the mechanic mentioned off-handedly, not looking up from his project – something involving wrenches and a hand-sized welder. Johner grunted in response, staring hard at the wall and imagining strippers pole dancing.

"Rough anybody up tonight?" Vriess continued amicably, if distractedly. Johner grunted again, slightly lower to indicate a no.

"Everything alright?" This time, a more neutral, noncommittal grunt.

Vriess paused in his work, looking up at the brute of man whose bulk took up all the available space on the rotting furniture, and focused all his attention on him for the first time since he and Ripley arrived. "Anything I can do to help?"

It didn't take long for Johner to realize he had turned his concentration from the stripping wall and was giving the handicapped man an considering, strangely hungry look. He reluctantly forced himself to stop, shaking his head and smirking slightly at his own desperation. Well, that was new.

With a sigh, Johner heaved himself up from the couch and patted Vriess' shoulder on his way to the kitchen. "Man, ask me again in a month."

**- End -**


End file.
